1172 



toward countries where individual rewards are greatest rather than 

 to countries where needs are most acute." ^'® 



Accordingly, as most students of brain drain hold, the "push" 

 factors predominate in decisions to leave the developing countries, 

 the advanced countries play the primary role of providing an alter- 

 native.^"^ Leslie Aldridge Westoff, co-author of a work on world 

 demography, summarized vividly the comparative considerations of 

 "push/pull" factors and the rationale for immigrating in the following 

 hypothetical but representative case of an Iranian FMG : 



It has probably never occurred to the Iranian peasant to be psychoanalyzed. 

 He is concerned with healing his sores and breaks so he can keep working. But 

 the Iranian doctor does not want to heal sores out in the villages. It is more 

 attractive to come to the United States, marry an American woman and get a 

 visa to stay. Here his salary is in still-beautiful dollars, more negotiable than 

 the pint of sheep's milk the peasant might pay him for setting a broken leg. 

 As he prospers, the needs of the wretched peasant back home can disappear from 

 memory surprisingly quickly,^ 



*^ Quoted In Henderson, op. cit, p. 87. 

 379 Ibid, p. 146. 



3» Leslie Aldridge Westoff, "A Nation of Immigrants : Should We Pull Up the Gang- 

 plank ?" The New York Times Magazine, Sept. 16, 1973, p. 80. 



